Yahoo is acquiring Instagram co-founders’ AI-powered news startup Artifact
Yahoo is acquiring Artifact, the AI-powered news app from Instagram’s co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the company announced on Tuesday. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Artifact will no longer operate as a stand-alone app, and its AI-powered personalization technology will be integrated across Yahoo, including the Yahoo News app in the coming months. Yahoo is TechCrunch’s parent company.
Systrom and Krieger will work with Yahoo in an “advisory capacity” during this transition.
The announcement comes a few months after Artifact said it would be winding down operations as the market opportunity wasn’t big enough to warrant continued investment. Although Artifact started as a simple news app, the end result seemed more like a Twitter replacement. There’s already a lot of competition in that space with numerous challengers, including Meta’s Threads.
Artifact’s technology surfaces content users want to see and becomes more attuned to their interests over time. As a result, users receive a personalized feed of news stories that they want to read. The app also included several AI tools to summarize news, rewrite clickbait headlines and surface the best content. Yahoo says bringing these capabilities into its portfolio “accelerates the opportunity to connect users with even richer content experiences and tailored personalization.”
“Artifact has become a beloved product and we’re thrilled to be able to continue to grow that technology and further our mission of becoming the trusted guide to digital information and the best curator connecting people to the content that matters most to them,” said Kat Downs Mulder, SVP and general manager of Yahoo News, in a press release.
Systrom said in the press release that Artifact’s technology has the opportunity to benefit millions of people, and that “Yahoo brings the scale to help the product achieve what we envisioned while upholding the belief that connecting people to the trusted sources of news and information is as critical as ever.”